August 23, 2010

sundry summer items

Saturday, as I was walking around Bushwick, the wind picked up and blew in the first fall breeze. That gust tells me that summer is rapidly coming to a close. The first part of my summer was spent finishing up Micro Green. Then, the last month went by so fast that I didn't have a chance to post any of my recently published writing. So, here, in an inelegant list, is the summer writing round up:

When architect Robert Siegel received the commission to design the United States Land Port of Entry in Calais, Maine, the easternmost border crossing between the U.S. and Canada, he didn’t instantly start sketching—he went on a road trip. In the middle of winter, Siegel and project manager Eduardo Ramos left their New York office, jumped in the car and visited more than 20 border-control stations in the Northeast. Driving back and forth between the two nations was revealing, even as it raised a few patrol officers’ eyebrows. The architecture at each crossing was universally banal, if not downright off-putting: acres of asphalt, bad signage, and antiquated and undistinguished buildings. Not exactly a warm welcome to the United States.

Compared with, say, the financial-services industry, architecture has
been slow to catch on to every technological trend. And while the IT lag
was made worse by the economic downturn and a reluctance to invest in
new hardware, the move into the cloud is coming along at just the right
time. With cheaper hardware and software refreshes, it’s a competitive
boon for smaller practices lacking the in-house computational might of
larger firms.

Dine: "I want this apartment to be an inspirational place. It’s very stimulating for the children to have all of this visual material to look at–—like an original Sex Pistols poster. It’s not a piece of art, but I treat it like art or a design object. I don’t listen to the Sex Pistols every day, but it’s a memory, a moment, a time: New York in 1977."

(This piece also got some attention on Unhappy Hipsters, which featured (skewered) not one, two, but three images from the photo shoot.)

Going green is, unfortunately, new to New Orleans. Lagging behind most major municipalities, it’s still without a citywide recycling program. But architect Coleman Coker of buildingstudio is out to raise awareness and, so far, reactions have been positive. “We were surprised when lots of people came to the opening and started telling us about their own retention ponds and backyard cisternsŃthey’re watering vegetable gardens and breeding dragonflies,” says Coker excitedly. “It has a small, but important, impact on a city that is rebuilding itself.”

William L. Murphy, of the eponymous bed, came to his design because (like Bauge) he lived in a small, one-room apartment but liked to entertain. Murphy patented his invention at the turn of the last century and it quickly gave rise to comedy skits, including Charlie Chaplin’s epic battle in the 1916 silent film One A.M.